Google-owned Waymo’s self-driving cars go 25,000 miles a day

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July 25, 2018

If you think your commute is long, try driving for Waymo… or sitting behind the wheel, rather. The Google-owned autonomous vehicle development company announced that its vehicles have reached 8 million miles on public roads, an average of 25,000 combined miles daily.

CEO John Krafcik boasted about the numbers at the National Governors Association in Santa Fe, New Mexico, last week, going on to remind attendees that those figures don’t include simulated miles, which brings the total up much higher to 13 million miles.

Further, Waymo’s vehicles have been involved in no major crashes or wrecks over that distance, something Uber is not fortunate enough to claim, and has caused the embattled ride-sharing company toroll back autonomous testing programsrecently.

The company plans to roll out a self-driving taxi service in Phoenix later this yearalong with German giant Daimler AG. The early riders program in Arizona includes 400 individuals making use of the self-driving rides every day for errands, but more than 20,000 have applied. The company has also ordered more than 80,000 vehicles to date, mostly Chrysler Pacifica minivans and the all-electric Jaguar I-Pace, and plans to add more as the company expands to Europe.

With Ford, General Motors, Uber, Daimler, and more all doubling down on autonomy, the field is crowded as ever.